This issue of the American Journal of Neuroradiology marks our 25th anniversary. The silver border on the journal’s cover and Reed Murtagh’s clever cartoon help celebrate this important milestone in our history.

The AJNR has evolved from what many newly trained radiologists would now consider a “primordial neuroradiological ooze” in 1980 to the publication of the most recent advances in neuroimaging and neurointervention. These scientific advances have been mirrored by simultaneous improvements in the formatting and publication of the journal; the ownership of the journal by the ASNR in 1986, self-publication in 1992, and on-line publication in 2000 are just three of the more notable events of the past 25 years. The cover illustrates the steps in “evolution” to a more advanced form of existence, a process that has been guided by the editors of the journal and supported by the Executive Committee of the ASNR.

While it seems obvious today that American neuroradiology should have a journal published under the sponsorship of the ASNR, that opinion was not uniformly shared 26 years ago. There were some who, for a number of reasons, felt that neuroradiology ought to remain under the umbrella of the larger diagnostic radiology journals. Time and experience has shown that the vision of those who advocated a separate specialty journal was correct. Large societies such as the ASNR flourish when they have their own dedicated vehicle for publishing scientific material, a concept which is further strengthened when associated societies contribute their efforts and material to a single widely read journal. This in particular pertains to those societies that call the AJNR their home for scientific publications: the American Society of Head and Neck Radiology (ASHNR); the American Society of Interventional and Therapeutic Neuroradiology (ASITN); the American Society of Pediatric Neuroradiology (ASPNR); the American Society of Spine Radiology (ASSR); and the most recently formed society, the American Society of Functional Neuroradiology (ASFNR). Editorial remarks by John Ulmer and Anderi Holodny, the first President of the ASFNR, appear in this issue of the journal.

From the initial editorial leadership of Juan Taveras to the subsequent innovations by Mike Huckman, the second editor of the journal, the AJNR has become a premier site for the publication of research in clinical neuroradiology. Volume 25 of the Journal is nearly quadruple the size of volume 1, attesting not only to the growth of our field but also to the value placed in having an article published in the AJNR. The volume of submissions has risen dramatically over the past 7 years, from 610 in 1998 to well over 1000 in 2004. Concomitantly, the percentage of submissions from outside North America has increased even more abruptly so that these submissions now represent over two-thirds of all papers sent to the journal. Editorials now enliven the journal, color is more liberally used, and information is rapidly accessed through the journal’s website. But in the end what really matters most, and what the journal should be judged by, are the advances in imaging and intervention found in its pages and the new, clinically useful information that the journal imparts to its readers. Over the years it can be said that the AJNR has succeeded remarkably well in this regard.

Radiology has been at the forefront of medical advances for the past quarter century and nowhere have those advances been more obvious than in neuroradiology. Look at volume 1 of the AJNR: the CT images are, by today’s expectations, unacceptable. Interventional neuroradiology had not become the force it is now in the treatment of vascular diseases and vascular abnormalities. MR imaging was nonexistent, and to mention just a few of the now discarded techniques that were published in that first volume of the journal, there were articles highlighting the injection of air into the subarachnoid space, a technique that then was combined with CT to outline small cerebellopontine angle masses. At that time, linear and complex motion bony tomography was used to evaluate the temporal bone and skull base, and arteriography of the neck vessels was obtained by a video subtraction technique following intravenous injection of iodinated contrast material. In fact, the first appearance of MR imaging (then called NMR) in the AJNR was in 1982 in an article by Graeme Bydder et al, which was broadly entitled Clinical NMR Imaging of the Brain. Those with access to early issues of the AJNR will find it edifying to thumb through articles from the first few volumes of the AJNR to appreciate how far our field has advanced in a relatively short period of time.

MR imaging changed the radiologist’s approach to many neurologic diseases, which previously had been invisible to imaging analysis. But even up to the time that the journal became self-published in 1992, many of the imaging procedures we now take for granted as virtually routine (fluid attenuated inversion recovery, diffusion-weighted imaging, short inversion time inversion recovery, single voxel MR spectroscopy) were either not available or were not routinely implemented. Even more recently, from the time the AJNR went online in 2000, there has been an increased use of parameters related to diffusion-weighted imaging such as fractional anisotropy and mean diffusivity, perfusion imaging with either MR or CT, multi voxel MR spectroscopy, and new coil and stent technology for interventional procedures. Such advances continue at a geometrically progressive rate.

In 2030, when the golden anniversary issue of the AJNR is published, readers of the AJNR may look back at the January 2005 issue, and wonder how we ever practiced effective neuroradiology with the “limited” imaging tools at our disposal. But for now, neuroradiologists can be satisfied with the advances in neuroimaging and neurointervention and we all can point to the fact that the AJNR has been a repository for a major portion of that information.